


The Bet

by shadow_in_the_shade



Category: Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (TV 2016)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations, Seduction, Sibling Incest, Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-16 07:19:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5819326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_in_the_shade/pseuds/shadow_in_the_shade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helene and Anatole make a bet regarding Natasha but it's not quite the arrangement everyone thinks it is.</p><p>The main ship here is Helene/ Anatole but with a side order of Dolokhov and the canonical attempt/s to seduce Natasha. Mostly based of the 2016 bbc miniseries with some book specific references and characterisations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**The Bet**

**1.**

She was half dreaming, half sleeping, and it was the best place to be. She wished she could hold onto it, this place, this half waking dream of a place and a state of being; it could only ever last for so long, slipping through her sleepy brain like snow through her fingers. She could doze all day trying to find that in–between place again. For there had once been a strange land, a strange country she could only ever imagine, peopled with curious creatures and unbelievable plants. They had dreamt it up together years and years ago when they realised there was no corner of this world that would take them. They could live here as king and queen of this land; she and her perfect prince who looked just like her.

She felt all at once the sun of her strange kingdom shining on her face as she felt the bedsheets cool and rustling beneath her as she twisted in them slow and languid, one hand between her legs, waking more and more each minute to the press of the pillow against her face and the sun of her dream fast fading in the bright harsh city sunlight that invaded the gap in the curtains. But she could hold onto it, hold it just enough to finish herself off as few men ever could.

The double doors swung open with a bang and she jumped, pulled the sheet up to her neck, eyes flashing and face flushed in the jarring day.

“You’ll never believe what I’ve just heard.”

“Get out!” She threw a pillow at her brother. He dodged it, laughing and ignoring her.

“Did I disturb you?” he raised an eyebrow carelessly – “Oh – were you doing something _naughty?_ Well go on, let me watch.”

“Shut up.”

“Where’s your husband?”

He pronounced the word with a sneer, as though they both knew it was a lie, even when it was not. She shrugged, scrunched her nose up as though the word had a bad smell.

“How should I know? Do you know where _your_ wife is?”

“Jealous?” He shrugged his jacket off onto the end of the bed and burrowed in beside her, facing her, poking her on the nose. She pouted, pushing him lazily –

“Get out!” she said for the second time. He ignored it again, burrowing further in, pouting back at her with sullen, obtuse immovability.

“Well at least close the door. I said I didn’t know where Pierre was, that doesn’t mean he’s out.”

“He’ll think it’s very sweet that we’re so close. Isn’t that what everyone thinks?”

“It’s not what father thought. Close the door.”

Anatole rolled his eyes at her but grudgingly obeyed.

“Now let me back in. It’s cold.”

“Hmm. You don’t deserve to not be cold. Where were you last night?”

“Fucking Dolokhov,” he shrugged – “Oh don’t give me that face. You did it first.”

“Well, is that any –” she gave up, held open the covers for a moment and finally moved up to give him room – “You might have let me know,” she grumbled.

“Why? So you could stop us?”

“No, idiot,” she rolled her beautiful eyes – “So I could join you.”

His hands found her breasts beneath the covers, teasing her nipples in his cold fingers until she squirmed;

“Does your husband know you sleep naked?”

“Will you _shut up_ about my husband? Anyone would think you were jealous.” He snorted.

“I’m not jealous.”

“Liar.”

“Of course I’m jealous. I’m so –” an ugly look came over his usually cheery, untouchable face, a silent snarl. But it was useless, he knew it was useless. They had accepted long ago that in lieu of any real happiness together they would instead have to make do with ruining that of others. A shining look of rare sympathy quickly came and went in her eyes before she put it firmly away, kissing the anger from his face, her soft lips brushing it out of the corners of his eyes and drawing it like a foul breath from his lips.

“You should be more careful,” she sighed, half softly, half with weary harshness – “You can’t just walk in like this. You never know who else you’ll find.”

“I’ll kill them,” he shrugged airily – “Kill them and fuck you – or fuck them and kill you, I haven’t quite decided.” He shrugged. She smiled; the curve of her lips killed him. He had to kiss her, and kiss her.  He had to keep on kissing her; it was that or say out loud the growl of _you’re mine_ that sprang to his lips. Because she wasn’t, and she couldn’t be, and she would point out the lie and that too would feel like a lie and he would get tangled and confused in working out what was true or what was not. It wasn’t worth it. The world was theirs to chew up and spit back out if they could just ignore that it would never give them this one thing. Better to fake happiness, carelessness, even cruelty than admit to sadness, caring or worst of all, love.

“Ugh ,” she breathed out, pulling away, just a little – “I thought you had news for me.”

“I _do._ ” He pulled her back, arching against her meaningfully.

“That’s not news, that’s your cock.”

“God. You’re so boring.”

“I’m _bored._ I’m not boring. _You’re_ boring. Now shut up and tell me the news.”

“Well which one do you want?”

“Oh don’t try and be clever. It doesn’t suit you.”

“You’re mean. I’ll tell. I’ll tell everyone how clever you are.”

“Don’t you _dare!_ It’s taken me years to cover it up.”

“Well anyway. I heard that that Natasha Rostova is in town with her father and they’re coming to the opera tonight.”

“Is _that_ news?” she sneered – “Why would I care about Natasha Rostova?”

“Oh she’s terribly pretty. And young. _Aaand_ she’s engaged to Prince Bolkonski and I hear they’re nauseatingly happy about it _and_ she’s getting ever so bored of waiting for him so –”

“Oh I see where this is going.”

“Well I can _try,_ can’t I? I’m going to be there anyway with Dolokhov –”

“Dolokhov again! One day one of you two will actually tell me something and then –”

“Oh shut up. I need you to introduce us.”

“I’m sure you and Dolokhov need no introduction.”

“Not to him! To the little Rostov girl. If she’s not mine by the end of the evening I’ll let you have a go on Dolokhov again.”

Helene had raised herself up on the pillow a little, perched on her elbow, head rested thoughtfully on her hand.

“No I’ve got a much better bet for you.”

“I’m listening.”

“I’ll come to the opera tonight _and_ I’ll introduce you to the girl – _if_ you let me try and seduce her first.”

Anatole’s eyes gleamed.

“You and her?” he grinned – “I’d like to see that.”

“Fine then. If I win you get to join in and if _you_ win you get me and Dolokhov at the same time and the girl to yourself.”

“You wanted to do that anyway!”

“Well then. Everyone wins. Deal?”

“Deal. Kiss to seal it.”

They did more than kiss to seal it.

__x__

**Okay be nice! I’ve never written any of these characters before or done any fanfic on a great classic so I’m nervous as hell how this is gonna go down…I mean I’m guessing the reader base for this will be two and half people and a bottle of vodka but I’m putting it out there all the same cause’ I’ve been epically inspired by the new tv series and I love the book so may as well share! Obviously a lot of this is based upon my own head canons and may not be how other people see things at all and that’s cool, feel free to come fight me! …just uh, fight me gently! :-)**


	2. Chapter 2

**So this chapter is way more graphic than the last one right from the start, just to warn/ let you know! :-)**

**2.**

He shoves his hand against her mouth to keep her from screaming and the roughness of it makes her come all the harder, eyes rolling, head spinning, biting at his hand from the effort of keeping silent.

“ _Bitch,”_ he hisses, spitting it into her face, not stopping, slamming her into the headboard over and over so that she had to dig her nails into his shoulders not to bash her head against the wall. He wouldn’t care, wouldn’t stop, thrusting into her savagely so that she cries with pain, whimpering in happiness all the while. Her nails dig crimson crescents into his skin and the pain makes him crueller, more violent with her and she knows it; she does not loosen her grip and wonders why he bothers to silence her when she can hear the bed protest and so too surely can her husband if he is anywhere in the house just now. She does not know, and does not care.

Anatole has been in a foul mood since they left the opera; well, she supposes he must be sulking at not beating her to their bet in the course of just one night, like he was bragging he would all the way there, and which she had scoffed at to begin with. But she does not keep him waiting when they make it back to her room. She supposes he would not have let her toy with him this time even if she had tried. He pushes her into the door, locking it behind them, falling on her before she can speak with that frightening feral lust she never can inspire in anyone else however hard she might try. He buries himself inside her in a brutal instant as though being otherwise had been painful for him.

And now she believes herself done, just waiting for him to finish, she thinks about asking him to stop just to hear him growl back his refusal and carry on anyway. But she can’t. She can’t turn it off, either, shut him off like the others, cannot fail to feel his cock inside her like she can with anyone else. Nor would she want to. Her body tingles in shivering delight, creeping back through her in a second wave and she feels more herself than she ever can when they are apart.

“ _Beast,”_ she hisses back, delighted and appalled with herself when she knows she is going to come again, hissing out words so few who knew her would imagine she even knew whilst he calls her every foul name he can think of, the abuse so much easier than tenderness. He stifles her screams a second time, biting at her throat this time to silence himself, shaking as he empties himself into her and she is shaking with him, locked together in one vibration far above the world.

Falling is hard and painful, it always is. They lie side by side panting, hands clasped more desperately than they will later care to admit, knees trembling, blinking sweat from their eyes.

“I hate you,” he murmurs now in some contentment, and she echoes the sentiment which is so close to the one they never say and yet far enough distant to be safely expressed.

“I’ll always hate you,” he adds. They move together without words, they always have, reaching, grabby hands like children, foreheads pressed together on one pillow. He strokes her arm idly, reverentially – “I’ll hate you until I die.”

“I hate you more than anyone I’ve ever hated,” she agrees – “I always have.”

It is a long established game that is not quite a game, a lie that is almost a code, a comforting alternative to a truth that would leave the both of them crying and useless, miserable to the point of hysteria. He remembers when she used to be that way, years and years ago before she grew up and put it off in favour of a consistent icy façade. They had both pretended to be happy for so long now they fooled themselves as well as anyone else. The ice only breaks when he is inside her and the broken pieces stab them into these moments of primitive, violent savagery, satisfying enough to make life worth living and unsatisfying enough to leave them always wanting more.

“So what’s the matter?” she asks, languidly, tracing his eyebrow with her fingertip.

“Is something the matter?”

“Of course it is. You’ve been perfectly foul since we left the theatre. Not a sore loser are we?”

“Loser?” He laughs in her face – “I haven’t lost a thing. What about you? _Oh Natasha –”_ he mimics – “ _What a lovely dress, I would sooo like to see it on my bedroom floor”._

“Oh shut up, that is _not_ what I said.”

“ _Oh how sweet you are, we really must take our clothes off together at some point.”_

“I said we should try dresses on together, moron, it was subtly different. You’re just sore because that _You’re so beautiful now jump into bed with me_ line didn’t work.”

“Not _exactly_ what I said. It’s fine. I’ve got this. It’s in the bag.”

“That may be but it’s _my_ bag. _I’ve_ got this. I’m going round first thing tomorrow to invite her to a party.”

“Oh really. Who’s party?”

“Mine, of course. Now be good or I won’t invite _you._ Maybe I can catch her before she’s fully dressed.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Of course it’s fair. We’ll just be two girls together doing girl things – stop that!” Anatole was grinning and nodding –

“Girl things,” he echoed. She slapped her forehead in playful exasperation.

“Oh, for God’s sake.”

“Fine. Well, whilst you do that I’ll go over to Dolokhov’s.”

“Do what you want. Do tell him from me to learn how to dress himself. The exotic hobo thing was just strange. He could at least _look_ like he has a rouble to his name.”

“He does –” Anatole poked the bruise he had left on his sister’s neck – “They’re all mine. And you, dear sister, look like the cheapest whore I’ve ever seen just now.”

“Oh _do_ I. And who looked like the whore at the opera?”

“Dolokhov. You were – you were –” he floundered.

“Oh you have the words to tell Natasha she’s beautiful when she isn’t but you don’t have them for me?”

“ _Everyone_ has words like that for you. I have – _other_ words for you. One does not go around telling one’s sister that she’s beautiful.”

“One doesn’t usually go around fucking one’s sister into the wall either but I notice it doesn’t stop you.”

“Would you like it to?”

“Oh, do shut up. I’m going to sleep.” She rolled over presenting her back and shoulder to him. He ran his hand up her spine, kissed the curve of her shoulder, buried his face in the warmth of her hair.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispered, barely audibly into the back of her neck. She smiled and pretended not to hear, knowing that if she did otherwise he would only pretend not to have said it. When he was here she only had to half pretend to be asleep anyway. When he was here flowers bloomed in all colours in their strange imaginary land and she found her way there easily, carried as she was so easily carried by her perfect prince who looked just like her.

__x__

**More plot was going to happen than this but then it didn’t. Eh that could be an eternal story by me. Enjoy. :-)**


	3. Chapter 3

**3.**

She wakes up earlier than usual the next morning, and she still finds herself alone. She hates waking; it makes her angry, and she hates being alone, though she prefers it this way when she can at least be alone on her own. She could lie in bed half the day ignoring the whole glittering world that she has to not only be a part of, but the centre. She wonders why she has to be that centre but only knows that she does and she remembers him asking her so long ago that same question - _why? why not just run away?_ and she hears a girl cry in reply because she did not know the answer then either, just knows that she is a bug, a beautiful glittering bug drawn to the lights and the dance, the chink of crystal and the sweep of satin and she could not give it all up not even for happiness, not then and even less now.

_Could you?_ She hears that girl ask – _be honest? Could you be no-one, nowhere – could you be poor?_ But they were just children and he a boy, younger than her and less able to fathom any of it than she could. She can see them behind her eyes, how he shook his head in a perplexity of grief and confusion – _but I love you._ The words did not matter, under the circumstances they were strangely irrelevant, what mattered was that his answer, if he had been able to give it was the same as hers. It was _no._

She shakes her head to dispel memory from her mind, convinces herself it was different people who ever said those things and convinces herself that they made the right decision. Every morning, waking up, this is part of her routine; no wonder the whole process is so difficult. She is haunted by her own ghost shaking its head at her in numerous mirrors and cut glass and crystal, shadows on the dance floor of who they used to be and who they could never be.

_Enough,_ she thinks, _enough._ She puts it away, smiles at herself in the mirror; it is a perfect smile, convincing to everyone. She stretches like a cat, watches herself carefully as she brushes her hair, half expecting her reflection to suddenly do something different, half wishing it would - turn down a different path, make better choices.

“Stop it,” she says out loud to the girl in the mirror, half expecting her to raise an eyebrow or smirk at her in reply; but it’s her other reflection that does that. She wonders if she is still quite sane, if she ever was; whatever that means. She thinks about her plans for the day; a girl, preparations, conversations, a party; these thoughts build up in her like armour, piece by piece. _Natasha_ she nods at her reflection, _first the girl._ She has never really been ruined herself, she wonders what it would be like. Destroyed, she supposes, shrugging, but never ruined.

She aches everywhere, feeling it as she starts to dress, as though she has been in a fight. They describe it as a good ache but it is not that good. It reminds her of the dents in her armour, the scratches underneath. The number of times she has to insist on no real scratches being left in her perfect skin, certainly not where anyone could see. It should not be this hard.

She wonders how long she slept alone. She supposes she should have known that he would leave; it was enough of a risk to stay so long at all, but how to resist falling asleep together? Face to face, forehead to forehead, breath to breath; there is something so innocent in it even after all this time, no matter what happens before or after.

Some mornings are easier than others. This is not one of those mornings. Last night was not one of those nights; the easy ones, the fun ones, when they can pretend it is all a game, and neither of them getting hurt – not _nobody_ getting hurt, there is always someone. Sometimes they come so close to saying all those things again; the things they said so many times and none of those times helped or made it easier to live with. But such words are addictive, like a drug to be let out rather than ingested; but they cannot be let out and so they fester inside so much of the time, poisoning from the inside out. Still she could hear a thousand men – _has_ heard a thousand men give her a thousand compliments and none but one of all the _I love yous_ she has ever heard have come close to touching her.

But this poison is a monstrous thing, a terrible burning beneath the skin and tragedy is so dull. She remembers waking to kisses in the night, insistent, demanding, needy as a child and brutal as an assailant. She cursed beneath her breath but she was smiling with her face buried into the pillow , wondering what it would be like to be a man and wake with an ache more awkward than her own. She knows she is irresistible and would rather hear it this way than poetically from a hundred strangers.

He at least is not gentle with her, knows that this body will not break and that the rest of her is long past breaking further. He turns her over roughly, with an easy sense of entitlement that she has no mind to argue against, or not until she feels his fingers start to invade her where she did not expect it, some kind of oil on them, opening her up. She tries to turn her head to object but he holds her face down by the back of the neck, muffling her objections, pinching her skin as though in punishment for moving. Curiously that cruel pinch sends shockwaves of pleasure down her spine, coiling at the base and she knows he knows it, leaning over her, grinning into her shoulder, kissing her there with perfectly shocking tenderness, none of which he shows in forcing his way inside her and she bites her screams into the pillow, face soaked with her tears and no wish in the world that he would stop.

His hands cover hers, feeling her fingers claw and grip at the sheets and she is crushed, covered, obliterated, desperate to reach a hand between her legs and unable to move, wondering if it could even be possible to get closer than this without fusing together completely. She likes the idea. She counts the crimes they are committing off in her mind as her brother slams inside her, the perfect beast intent on his own pleasure and – she suspects – on voiding those sickening feelings of tenderness in a brutal outpouring of lust. Adultery, sodomy, incest – to do so much badness all at once is positively dizzying and she is close to coming purely on contemplation of these facts when he beats her to it, leaving her whimpering a half shriek of frustration into the pillows. Her brother laughs at her, rolls off, pulls her around as though she was a pillow herself. She starts to grumble _god you’re always pulling me places –_ and gets a lazy _shut up_ in return. Her head rests between his chest and arm and she sighs in relief when his fingers find her terrible ache, rubbing lazy circles where he knows it feels best. He kisses the top of her head, grinning, mocking – _did you think I’d just leave you? Would I be so mean? Yes,_ she hisses between her teeth and he stops altogether for too many seconds before finishing her with more skill than anyone should have, hand over her mouth because he knows she can never keep quiet enough.

Now she sighs as she checks herself, on the verge of heading out. If only it could be like that always – if only it could be like that but better and they could wake up together as well. It seemed that once there was a time when they could, that they had had all the time in the world, hours to spend in play and reverence. She wonders what they did with that time, if it ever really had existed after all. She chides herself for letting an _if only_ slip by her. She supposes she could call in on her two favourite little monsters before heading over to the Rostov’s but knows if she did she would never leave in time. She thinks about Natasha and manages to muster up some enthusiasm for the plot on hand.

She catches herself in the mirror one last time before heading out into the world. Yes, she is perfect, hair and smile so firmly fixed they may as well be a sword in each hand unsheathed and ready for battle. And the sword edge of her smile gleams.

__x__

 

**Yes! It is a monstrous love and it makes monsters of us all! I had to slip that in there a little bit ok, shoot me. Speaking of which I just watched episode 5 and I’m dying. Kill me, seriously. I promise this really is leading to sexy threesomes with Dolokhov ok, I’m getting to it!**

**One note that I couldn’t work into the chapter neatly is that I really did research nineteenth century lube and found that it was either olive oil  or a strange exotic thing made from crushed yams and spices. So my headcanon is Dolokhov got hold of some of the latter in his travels and Anatole probably keeps some on his person at all times for just this kind of occasion. I really did think it through see, there just really wasn’t a neat way of getting it in! But yeah, stinky yam juice it is. :-)**


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Quick note – I was going to write a short chapter breaching the gap between the morning and covering the events of the evening party with Natasha, but we know those events anyway and it would have been really filler so I just skipped it and jumped to the end of the party. I’m trash, shoot me, I just want everyone to jump into bed with Dolokhov. If you hate super sexy threesomes please do not read! I will trigger warn for fake dub – con I guess, it’s really 100 % consensual, these trash babies just like to pretend it isn’t.**
> 
>  
> 
>  

**4.**

 

“You seem to be doing rather well,” she remarks coolly when everyone has left, or is leaving. Anatole turns around briskly with a smug look which fades a little when he sees the arch of her eyebrows, hears the chill in her voice.

“Jealous?” he sneers, giving her back nastiness for nastiness; a game they are both all too good at - “Because you’re losing or because I kissed her?”

“Neither, I’m sure. Besides you wouldn’t have kissed her without my help.”

“Now who’s a sore loser?” His grin gets meaner – “So are you more jealous of her or me?”

She snorts, gives a not quite chuckle of superiority.

“As if I couldn’t do better than some idiot child.”

He almost smiles, then frowns –

“Hey, did you mean her or me?”

“You decide,” she drops back over her shoulder as she turns her back on him coldly.

“Oh come on –” Anatole groans under his breath, exasperated, taking her arm and drawing her, unintentionally into the same cloakroom he had ended up with Natasha;

“Come on Lelya don’t be like that, it was just a game.”

“Do you love her?”

“What?” the idea genuinely throws him. “What? No, of course I don’t love her! I don’t love anyone except –” he stops quickly, shocked at himself, the same shock widening her eyes at what he might have been about to say. They stare at each other in horrified silence for a few moments too long.

“You don’t love anyone – but you’re good at pretending otherwise?” she manages, finally, smoothly, coming to his rescue.

“Exactly. Of course. Urgh - what did you think I was going to say?” They both laugh, a little awkwardly, but better in the knowledge of how narrowly they dodged the bullet.

“Anyway, don’t you have a home to go to?” the smile is back on her face; but just for now it’s the one she gives the whole world, not the one he guards closely as being just for him.

“Do I have to?” he whines. She shakes her head, partly a negative, partly in despair of him.

“Come on,” she sighs, slipping her hand through his arm and walking him slowly away from the main hall and reception rooms, looking around furtively as they head up the stairs.

“Pierre hates my parties,” she shrugs, with apparent disinterest. “He’ll almost certainly find somewhere else to be until the small hours – and then he’ll find somewhere to be that’s not here. And the whole east wing is virtually untouched these days.”

Slow though her brother can be, he is infinitely less so when it comes to taking a hint. They have come away from the main suites and through into an older part of the building. With barely enough light in these corridors to see by, Anatole wastes no time in disengaging his arm from his sister’s and locking it around her instead, pulling her close, touching her face in the dark with his fingertips, trying to see her without the aid of vision. It is not hard.

“You could drive a man insane, you know that?” he whispers it, warm against her face.

“Of course I know that. Kiss me,” she replies roughly, to break through the alarming tenderness; it keeps popping up nowadays and it frightens her. As though something terrible is going to happen. If it is, it does not happen now; kisses are never terrible. They stay like that for a long time in the almost dark before being startled out of it by the sound of a match sparking and the glow of a cigar from the door.

“Some people,” a lazy voice drawls – “Should take better care who’s watching them.” For a few awful seconds they stare at the light like moths, each feeling the other’s heart race.

“I don’t know if you know –” the voice goes on – “But considering there are some rather disgusting rumours going around about some people it might be –”

“Dolokhov!” Anatole yells, storming the gap between them, grabbing the man by the lapels and dragging him into the nearest bedroom. Helene follows, laughing, largely with relief and turning on some lamps as the boys proceed to grab at each other.

“Oh, for god’s sake!” she sighs eventually sitting down on the edge of the bed and shaking her head at them – “Just kiss!” They pause, look at her quizzically and look back at each other. Dolokhov shrugs and all but launches himself at his friend’s face. Kissing is like a battle nobody really wants to win. By the time they break apart Helene has stopped laughing at them and is slowly starting to shed garments like a snake shedding skin.

“That woman….” Dolokhov finds himself speaking very slowly, unable to look away – “Has no shame.”

“Arsehole,” Anatole elbows him – “That’s my sister you’re talking about. Close your mouth.”

“Close yours. You’ve seen it before.”

“And if I could see you like this every day –” he says this last to Helene, taking the hand she holds out to him, letting her pull them both towards the bed – “It would not be enough.” Dolokhov finds himself for the first time feeling awkward, aware of himself as an intruder, almost wanting to look away. The way they look at each other – it is suddenly unbelievable that all one ever hears are rumours. He does not look away; they are far too beautiful. Helene meets his eyes over her brother’s head and those wicked eyes are smiling. Anatole feels her looking and turns around together with her. Dolokhov finds himself wondering if they even know how strangely in unison they move.

“Terribly sorry – would you like a go?” Anatole grins, pushing Helene towards him, and how could anyone not kiss her when she smiled at you like that? Spiders, both of them, Dolokhov thinks; every time he tells himself they will not lure him in again – Anatole’s hand is on his cock, feeling him through his clothes with his sister’s naked breasts pressed against his chest – how could he not get caught up in a web like this?

“Is that for her or for me?” Anatole teases.

“There’s really no good way I can answer that –”

Helene laughs musically, in his ear –

“If there was, he wouldn’t have asked.”

 She actually licks his earlobe lightly as she moves away. He groans softly. Anatole was whispering something in her ear and she was turning to look at Dolokhov, smiling and nodding in reply.

“I hate you both,” he groans, knowing he should get it in there before he loses the faculties of speech. Anatole is sitting up against the headboard, Helene positioning herself beneath him and nothing he can do but watch until told otherwise.

“Come on Fedya,” Anatole laughs. “Fuck her, fuck my beautiful sister, I’ll hold her down for you –” his eyes glint, so that this time Dolokhov can see but Helene cannot and he grins to know they maybe haven’t discussed _everything,_ Anatole adding savagely “- rape the bitch”.

She screams and fights, her head comfortably nestled in her brother’s lap, his cock hard against her face through the fabric. She fights because she knows he’ll hold her down and he does, pinning her wrists cruelly to either side of her head in his clenched fingers.

“Bitch,” he hisses, close to her face – “Spread your legs for him you slut – Fedya, force her,” he adds when she will not. Dolokhov grins in response, he’s been playing their games long enough to know the moves. He knows her legs part too easily for him but he spreads her brutally all the same.

“Good –”Anatole watches like a hawk. “Slam it into her – hurt her.”

Dolokhov scowls faintly; he never does like to be told to do what he was going to do anyway. She just screams and swears at both of them, they’re monsters and she hates them both, perfect disgusting little beasts. Dolokhov laughs at that and impales her on his cock in one savage thrust;

“But it’s a beast you want, isn’t it princess?”

“It’s _two_ beasts,” Anatole corrects, not ready to be left out for a second – “Fill her up now, make her scream.” Helene’s eyes roll in her head from trying to glare at him, unable to escape Dolokhov’s savage pounding with Anatole holding her still. He does let go of her wrists though, at least enough to move, to curl around her, straighten himself enough to bring his face to hers and kiss her, one hand squeezing her breast, pinching her already painfully hard nipples, the other hand holding hers in a passionate grip, fingers entwined on the pillow where before he had just held her pinned down.

Dolokhov watches the kiss and knows that it is this, more than anything, that any minute now is going to finish him off. God, but they are beautiful. His eyes sparkle from taking it in, knowing he is alone in being able to witness this, knowing too what even they do not like to admit. He can see right through the smiling curves of those lips all the way to the tenderness hidden in their eyes. He can see their fingers twisted together and cannot tell whose are whose. He can see the way they look at each other, wide eyes open even when they kiss, looking as though nobody else exists in the world, not even him. Perhaps she feels this because she reaches her other arm to him, curling around his neck as if to ask him not to feel left out. He knows they won’t love him, not like they do each other and cannot mind, not when he gets to see this, not when he can be at least a part of them without ever getting between them. He kisses the palm of her hand in tender thank you whilst never fucking her any more gently. When he comes she comes and she offers up her cries into her brother’s mouth. Yes, he thinks, he would rather be a part of this forever than have anything of his own.

He has barely even pulled out before Anatole is pushing him aside, taking his place.

“Here –” he mocks – “Let me show you how it’s done.” They swap places, never breaking eye contact, even when Anatole slides inside her. He fucks her almost angrily, certainly possessively, and everything in his eyes scream to Dolokhov _she’s mine, she’s mine, she’s mine_ with an amused undertone of graciousness that he will ever let his friend share this one thing he treasures the most. Dolokhov does not know whether to be amused or sad for them that while Anatole will make this possessiveness clear to him he would never admit to her. He buries the sorrow in Helene’s perfect breasts; she smiles, cradling his head between them almost affectionately.

Anatole is far from done before Dolokhov finds himself getting hard again from watching them fuck and Helene, feeling it, smiles against his face and bends her head to whisper two words into his ear. He nods, more ready for such an instruction than anything else she could have said. She pushes his own bottle of oil into his hand. He was sure that had been in his pocket and has no idea how or when she got hold of it.

“Witch,” he whispers back and she grins and kisses his fingers, opening the bottle with her teeth and dripping the oil on the fingers she has kissed. She kisses him almost chastely on the lips and he moves away, Anatole leaning in to kiss her instead. As he leans over Dolokhov .takes him by the hips, fingers entering him, followed by his cock. When it starts to feel good it starts to feel too good and Anatole comes deep inside his sister, Dolokhov’s teeth grazing the back of his neck.

Helene wriggles out from under them, twisting like a snake so she can kiss Anatole as Dolokhov fucks him. This time it is Anatole who groans that he hates them both and both of them whose turn it is to laugh at and ignore him. She shuffles back, curling up comfortably at the top of the bed, smiling; the eye contact she offers them, alternately one and then the other, is both gracious and intoxicating. Truly, she watches them fuck as though it is a spectator sport, neither of them can be sure if she is yawning just for show or not when she stretches lazily, her eyes never leaving them.

She watches them, bright eyes never missing a moment, and when Dolokhov feels himself close she is there, squirming in to get a hand around her brother’s cock. She kisses his cries from his lips like he did for her and it feels to Dolokhov when he empties his balls into the brother it is the sister taking from both of them, Anatole coming into her hand as his friend comes into him. They collapse together on the end of the bed, the three of them, gasping, half laughing, half sighing, forehead to forehead to forehead, trying lazily to kiss all three at once.

-x-

The men lie on either side of Helene, arms clasped over her head while she fidgets and strokes at both of them.

“You know, Fedya,” she sighs, as her brother kisses the top of her head – “I’ve not been a  princess for a while now.”

“You’ll always be a princess,” Anatole interjects. She frowns, unable to tell if this is an insult or disgustingly affectionate. Either way she frowns at him.

“You people and your titles,” Dolokhov shakes his head – “Like I give a fuck.”

“You’re a savage,” she smiles, yawning for real this time, sliding down between them to sleep.

“And that’s why we love you.” Anatole finishes, as they curl together, twisting limbs and heads on each other’s shoulders. Dolokhov frowns, wondering if that was more than a figure of speech. He knows he will not ask for clarification any more than he would point out their love for each other. For himself he does not usually struggle to express his feelings, but it’s different with these two. They share so freely it seems, whilst loving so guardedly. It is all at once intoxicating and touching, almost painfully so in each case. He watches them fall so easily asleep on each other and wonders why he feels so strong a need to protect them.

__x__

**Well, this may be the best sex scene I’ve ever written, enjoy all, I’m done. I ot3 it and I think I broke my beta :-)**

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

**5.**

That morning, unusually, Dolokhov finds himself the last to wake, and then he only does so because Helene’s foot is tapping him in the face. He groans, coming to, to see her, lying across the bed on her belly, chin propped on her hands, foot idly swinging near his face, saying something with a laugh in her voice as she watches and doubtless bothers Anatole.

Anatole, to his very great surprise, is sat at the small desk in the corner of the room chewing on the end of a pen and squinting.

“I do _not_ stick my tongue out when I’m thinking,” he says, and from the tone of it Dolokhov guesses he has been pressing this point for longer than he would like.

“You do,” his sister insists – “You always have done.” She sticks her tongue out at him in her turn. Anatole takes the sheet of paper in front of him, scrunches it up and throws it at her.

“You do you know,” Dolokhov chimes in, while Helene swings her foot in his face again, laughing and dodging the paper missile.

“Morning,” she yawns.

“You’re both picking on me,” Anatole whines. “It’s not fair.”

“ _Oh my darling Natalie –”_ Helene laughs, smoothing out the crumpled sheet and reading aloud _“My heart is –_ unreadable apparently – _and I dream every night of your breasts –_ her breasts? Really?”

“At least dream every night of her eyes,” Dolokhov adds – “Her breasts are not that impressive.”

“ _I find myself thinking about you at the most inopportune moments,”_ Helene reads, rolling languidly onto her back and reading the missive in tones of melodramatic tragedy – “So does that mean when you were fucking me or when he was fucking you?”

“Right.” Anatole gets up from the desk and tries to snatch the letter back off Helene. She laughs, leaps up and stands on the bed holding it aloft, Dolokhov sighing and watching them jump and wrestle for it, Anatole in his shirtsleeves and Helene without a stitch on, not caring if she _is_ leaping around in bed naked. It is far too early in the morning for this. He finds the remnants of a bottle of rum by the bed and takes a good drink, nectar hitting the back of his throat and waking him into better readiness for this.

“Alright!” he yells – “Alright my children, that is _enough!”_ For some reason, he never knows why, they do stop, and Helene thrusts the letter at Anatole’s chest as though she did not care anyway.

“You weren’t _really_ thinking of her – were you?” she whispers, almost, Fedya thinks, amused like a naughty schoolchild. He supposes she never was a schoolchild, reminded as he is reminded a dozen times each day of the difference in his world frame of reference to theirs.

“Of _course_ not –” Anatole mutters in a charmingly similar manner- “I was just trying to make it sound good.”

“No offence, friend –” Dolokhov begins, “Oh, sit down both of you, you’re making my head hurt –”

“That’s the rum,” Helene whispers. Dolokhov shoots her a _shut up_ glare.

“No offence Anatole,” he goes on – “It doesn’t sound good. Right. Sit down. Take note.”

“Oh oh oh – can I help?” Helene wriggles back down into her previous position, watching Anatole take up his pen again as though she is right back at the opera.

“No.” Dolokhov says shortly, stroking the back of one perfect leg as he dictates – “ _My Dearest Natalie – Since yesterday evening my fate has been sealed – to be loved by you or to die – there is no other way –”_ Anatole scribbles studiously, Helene looks sideways at Dolokhov, grinning wickedly and nodding.

“Not bad –” she approves – “It’s a pretty low trick but it won’t half work. What girl doesn’t go for the   _I’ll die for you_ thing?”

“You wouldn’t,” Anatole throws over his shoulder.

“You never tried me,” she snips back. “That’s nice,” she adds as Dolokhov’s hand trails up to the small of her back.

“Hey!” Anatole frowns over his shoulder – “No fucking while I’m writing.”

“Write faster.” 

“No, that’s fair,” Helene nods – “We can’t do our most favourite thing whilst he’s doing his least.”

“Dear girl, who said you were my most favourite thing?” Dolokhov grins at her as though this is a compliment.

“I did,” she responds smartly – “Have you done that one sentence yet?”

It is, Dolokhov thinks, like a mad troika ride, keeping up with these two, but he does not really know how he will ever get off.

“How would I ever chose between the two?” he answers her – he always _can_ keep up, he imagines this is what has kept them amused by him or so long.

“Luckily,” Helene purrs – “You don’t have to.”

Dolokhov shakes his head, sighing, narrating two more lines to Anatole whilst still running his fingers up Helene’s spine, watching her shiver with mild delight. Sometimes he wonders how it would be to be like this always. He has never admitted it, but he has spent more hours than he would have liked imagining some big beautiful estate in the country – not even necessarily in this country – it could be far away, somewhere nobody knew who they were, living just the three of them out of the glare of the world. He wonders why they, who hate it more than he does, have never left the glittering circles they were born to. At the same time he remembers what _he_ was born to and cannot blame them for a moment.

There was a time, he remembers, he always thought about settling down. Finding some sweet girl who would turn his head, make a good man out of him, or some such cliché. He knows he has a capacity to love and be loved and the idea of this sweet, simple, vaguely - possibly even extremely - wealthy life has been a golden dream of his since he was a boy.

But it is a dream, and when he wakes up from it he knows both that he can never have it and that there is too great a part of him that does not really want it. The girl, Sonya – she could  have been that girl. There was a core of steel and flame in her that he recognised in himself, in his own blood. But in truth, even by then it had been too late, and when she refused him he had, almost calmly, half ruined her lover before setting the dream aside. He remembers it now as a dream like a childhood hope. Even then he had been starting to know he was already too in love for the right girl ever to be really right.

This here, with these two; it is a thousand miles apart from that sweet and simple ideal but when he looks at them, especially the two of them together, he knows he cannot go back, that he is tied down between dreaming of perfect simplicity and the perfect life of debauchery with them.

And neither dream is possible, he knows. In the end he will settle for what he has always settled for – he’ll settle for what he can get.

__x__

**It’s just occurred to me – as horrible painful headcanons for these idiots keep occurring to me – that whilst Dolokhov is one of the few people to know that _they’re_ in love he literally has no idea whether or not they really love him and would never ask. My beta has said if I don’t fix this before the end of this fic they may never speak to me again. :-)**


	6. Chapter 6

 

**6.**

She had never much believed in superstition; omens and portents, divination – it all seemed rather silly to her. She could not answer in her own mind if there was such a thing as fate, some mystical design or pattern in the world, and she was not entirely sure how anybody could. She wondered if it was all an advanced game of make believe, a group of children still crowded round a mirror, giggling and enjoying the feeling of awe in the face of a force beyond them. She was not sure there was a force beyond herself, and if there was it was hardly relevant to her life so it did not seem to be something she need waste much time with.

But then tonight she finds herself looking up at the sky and is struck by a feeling of curious dread. She does not like it; it is discomforting, and more to the point ridiculous. In truth she does not look up at the sky much these days, especially not at night. The stars that everyone spoke of as so limitless, so infinite have always seemed to her like decorations stuck onto the bottom of an upturned bowl and the sky itself was just that bowl, closing in around the horizon, the world only existing as far as she could see it. It had always given her a vague and doubtless silly sense of claustrophobia.

But tonight, she frowns, going inside and turning away from the sky – seeing that dark bowl slashed across with that startling streak of silver – it was as though the lid of the world was cracking. She had heard people talk; Pierre babbling away about portents and the end of the world. She was not sure about that. There seemed to be something portending the end of the world every couple of years, some bizarre unfounded dread that circulated society in hushed whispers – that same nonsensical sense of awe all over again. All the same, it seemed to her that if the heavy covering of sky that held the whole world in could look so very like there was a crack in it, perhaps the whole thing could just break apart. For the first time the words _brink of war_ and _defining moments in our history_ struck some kind of meaning for her and she found herself shuddering as she drifted slowly up to her suite.

“Get your feet off the table; that is mahogany,” she sighs wearily, Anatole shrugs, moving only slowly and setting an apple core down on the same small table his boots had previously occupied.

“What’s the matter with you tonight?”

“Nothing, what’s the matter with you?”

“You’re in a mood.”

“No I’m not,” she shrugs too airily; most would hardly notice – “What are you doing here?”

“I live here remember? At least these days, it seems.”

“If you say so. It’s becoming easy to forget. Where have you been?”

She shrugs her cloak off onto the floor, a whisper of green, a waterfall puddling at her feet.

“Oh. Here and there.”

She rolls her eyes.

“Here and there he says, not knowing I know all about it. Shouldn’t you be off still playing your little boy abduction games with Dolokhov?”

“Ohh, I see.”

“No, I’m sure you don’t.”

“She’s moody, she’s chilly, she’s annoyed about our plans –” he leans back heavily in the chair, splaying a hand out in front of him unnecessarily and ostentatiously examining his finger nails – “She’s _jealous.”_

A sudden rage that is not really all that sudden rises up inside her and her hand raises before she can stop it and she whips around to face him. He raises an eyebrow with insolent amusement, rises and takes hold of her wrist, taking advantage of the pause in which she holds herself back.

“Slap me. I might like it.” His fingers tighten around her wrist; she tries to pull away and failing to do so stamps on his foot –

“I am _not_ jealous,” she hisses, yanking her hand back – “I’m _never_ jealous,” she adds too quickly – “Fuck who you want, _je m’en fous.”_

“Liar.”

“Oh for god’s sake, _shut up_ Anatole.” She puts her hands on her hips, squeezes her eyes closed, presses her lips together, everything to hold herself in.

“Are you crying?” he still has that half amused, half teasing tone and it makes her careful, steely attempt at self preservation waver.

“No, I’m not fucking crying,” she spits, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

“Hey –” he touches her shoulder, gently. She shrugs it off irritated, but in the same breath feels herself turning, pressing her face into his shoulder, partly for comfort, partly so that he cannot see.

“I’m not jealous,” she says again, muffled, standing there stiffly, arms refusing to go round him like they want to. He holds her though, rubbing her back in a way that implies both comfort and that she is being very silly. She realises that in repeating herself she is making the lie more obvious but does not seem to be able to stop herself – “It’s stupid. I’m not jealous. You’re not jealous. Neither of us are ever jealous _.”_ She repeats it leadenly, like a mantra, because it is such a painful damned lie but it has to be true, she has to make it true, has been working on making it true for years. It frustrates her that it can still be so difficult.

He opens his mouth to say something, she has a horrible feeling it might be an awkward platitude, a wooden _there there,_ and he feels it too and closes his mouth again.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says instead.

“What doesn’t matter?” now her arms do go around him.

“Well none of it. None of it matters a bit. Nothing matters and everything is fine. We don’t speak of such things, remember?” It is a mantra more often repeated perhaps than any of the others. He touches her cheek gently, she raises her head, he takes her face in his hand, gently brushing her chin.

“ I _remember.”_ she sighs through gritted teeth – “Don’t –” but he does; he kisses her and there is something so frightening in it that it leaves her breathless, kissing back with no lies and too much passion, too much love; the story of their life, clinging to each other all the while more like children than lovers. They might have stayed that way all night if not for the need to breathe and when she does take a breath, leaning her cheek against his, head half on his shoulder he kisses her forehead and tenderly whispers –

“Lend me some money.”

“What?”

She almost jumps away, a flash of fire in her eyes like that streak across the sky. This time she _does_ slap him.

“ _Va te faire foutre vous merde embulent!”_

Anatole rubs his cheek and looks at her, frowning –

“I – don’t even know what you just called me –”

“Maybe if you’d _listened_ in our French lessons instead of stopping after _s’enfuir avec moi ma charmante -_ ” she stops, sighs, shakes her head, suddenly incredibly weary – “How much do you want?”

“I suppose about twenty thousand?”

She swears under her breath, but at least so he can understand her this time.

“I don’t have that. You can have ten. Get the rest from Dolokhov.”

“Thank you,” he nods a little stiffly, his eyes shift away from her – “I didn’t –” it occurs to him, only just now that he had timed his request rather terribly – “I didn’t kiss you so you’d lend me the money.”

She snorts, shrugs one shoulder.

“I don’t care. I don’t care about any of it.”

“You really think I’d do that?”

“Yes.”

He shakes his head at her, at a loss what to say –

“I don’t – I’m not – it’s just –” whatever it is, she can see it is more than he can articulate – “Helene I –”

“ _Don’t!”_ her eyes widen and her heart stops – “Don’t you fucking dare.” He sighs, looks down at the floor, digs a toe into the carpet –

“We won’t be gone that long. It’s not like I’m making a life with her and when I get back –” he grins at her, sunny again – “When I get back you’re going to owe me for a bet well won.”

She rolls her eyes, forces herself to smile. It feels like a crack across her face, finishes burrowing in her desk and shoves the ten thousand ungraciously at his chest.

“You can go – and I don’t care if you never come back,” but she is smiling wryly as she says it and he knows that everything, though damaged, is not broken.

“I will come back.” He clasps her hand at his chest just for a moment, kissing her knuckles briefly; knowing that to do more just now would be unwise, he touches her face with the lightest of fingertips and leaves.

She sighs in his wake, rubbing her forehead with the palm of her hand. She walks over to the window, feeling all of a sudden terribly alone. Outside the clouds have covered up the stars and the comet is gone from view. It is just a mask, she knows, those clouds, everything bright and unforgiving is still there, tearing away at the sky like claws at the heart. Everything is still there beneath that soothing softness of cloud, just as jagged, just as scarred as it was before.

__x__

  **So if I got this right, the French in order reads _I don’t care, go fuck yourself you walking piece of shit_ and finally _run away with me my dear._ Please heartily pardon my attempts and please, if you happen to be fluent send me the corrections! I haven’t studied since a-level and my family is Belgian with French as third language, so yeah, I’m hazy on a lot of detail – I’m not even sure if the modern colloquialisms would still read like that for 200 years ago, but it’s the closest I could get! **

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**7.**

She is half amused at Pierre having torn up and down the town searching whilst Anatole has been here all along. Well, she amends, first at Dolokhov’s and then here. She is almost saddened that her curious husband could think so little of him, think so little of them both, all this while assuming Anatole is just up to further mischief at the club or the houses they have both been known to frequent when all the while he was only ever with the people that he loved. She feels a surge of defensive protectiveness, like she used to get when they were little and he was so very innocent, so surprised when he was told that the thing he had done was bad.

He has hardly changed now, she reflects; too blind to the results of his own actions, he finds himself fully able to believe that he never does any harm. It would positively hurt him to imagine that he had done and she has always protected him from such discovery. It is, she supposes, sighing – a desperate kind of innocence and she wonders if it was right of her to have always nurtured this in him.

She thinks about trying to explain to him some of the things she has learned; how wicked the world is, how corrupt; how judgemental people will inevitably be. Nothing is good, and everything is wrong in the eyes of society. It is a tightrope she has to walk every day, every day feeling like she could fall at any moment. Much as her heart cries for him to join her everywhere she cannot have him up here on that tightrope in the dark; she needs him below her in the light to catch her when she does fall. She remembers him so many years ago, asking her _why_ with tears in her eyes, crying, his head in her lap, clinging to her like he could never let go and none of the lines she could think of in reply, lines people had given her as their reasons, none of them sounded sufficient – none of them _were_ sufficient – _because it’s wrong, because it’s against the law, because we can’t, because I’m your sister, because it’s wrong –_ always back to that which with nothing to bolster it still demanded another _why_ and there was nothing more to offer in reply. He did not, _would not_ understand, and that nonsensical concept of wrongness without reason had only distressed him to a degree she could not bear to witness, the more because she barely understood it herself.

When she is forced to really search herself – a thing she wished she would never have to do – the one truth she always comes down to is that he is and always will be her baby brother and needs to be protected.

The frustration of not being able to do more when Pierre enters the room tears at her to the point where she realises she is on the brink of threatening him for hauling Anatole off. She bites it back – and the urge to follow them. She has no choice and when neither of them then return she still has no choice but to smile and smile and be nice to her guests, anxiety shooting through her all the while whilst she waits for them to leave. She smiles and smiles until everyone is gone and she can stop, though she feels happier – or more relieved at least – with them gone than she did with them here. As soon as the door is closed the smile drops from her face like an overly heavy cloak and she walks quickly, looking in each room for either or both of them.

Pierre is nowhere to be found, and she finds herself relieved; it is not like she really wants to see him anyway. Anatole – finally – is in her room, standing near the bed with his back to the door, but she can tell from the way that he stands that he is distressed by something. He seems to have his face buried in one of her dressing gowns, squeezing it tightly between his hands. He drops it when he hears the door, looking around surprisingly guiltily.

“What’s the matter?” she asks, her voice betraying too much anxiety. She realises her abilities to repress have been frayed by the hours of smiling – “What happened? Where’s Pierre? What are you doing?”

“I –” his forehead crumples down the centre, the same little furrow appearing that he has had since he was two and only just learning how to use it to get everything his own way. He is not using it this time and it has always stabbed her to the heart every time he makes that face for real. She wonders if it partly because of this that he always looks so cheerful, even, sometimes, when he isn’t – “I have to leave Moscow.”

“When?”

“Now,” he spits out a little broken laugh – “Immediately.” He sits down on the side of her bed – “Your husband – ” he takes a deep breath – “Is insane. Do you know he threatened me?”

“He does that.”

“He tried to kill me with a paperweight!”

“At least it wasn’t a table.”

Anatole’s face darkens; he has never forgiven Pierre for that. At the time he had been so angry he had started insisting on duelling him, until she had pointed out that it was duelling that started the whole problem they were in back then anyway. For her sake, he had managed to restrain himself, but she had never seen his face so dark as when she first came to him with that news. The reminder however, is too much just now, and his face crumples. He makes a curious gesture that she realises would be him reaching out to her for a hug if he thought it would be alright to do so.

She feels herself like water, running into his arms and he is the sea always calling her. He clutches her around the waist, pressing his head into her thigh. She shakes her head, cradling his; such a child, she thinks, murmuring gently that it is alright, it will all be alright.

“Now come on,” she says, putting herself up on to the bed, leaning into the pillows, letting him all but crawl into her lap, feeling his face damp against her chest – “What’s this about? Not just the Rostova girl surely? So you’ll go to Petersburg, it doesn’t matter, I’ll follow as soon as I can, you know I will, there’s always a reason.”

She comforts herself with this, knowing it is true. The whole of her married life there have always been reasons. Reasons for Pierre to be absent. Reasons to _accidentally_ turn up wherever Anatole happens to be, reasons for him to have to live with them. Always so many perfectly acceptable reasons. After all, they are family.

“But I feel like –” Anatole is nibbling his tongue in a concentration of alien thought – “No, it sounds stupid. But I feel like something bad is going to happen.”

“That’s silly,” she says, automatically, though it chills her to hear him echo, seemingly, the feeling she had the night she saw the comet – “Silly,” she echoes herself, but she holds him a little bit tighter, kisses the top of his head. He kisses back, wherever his lips can reach, between her breasts, against her collar bones, trailing kisses messily, increasingly intently up her neck.

“No –” she groans, trying to push his head away, but he is like a persistent pony, pushing against her, lips upon her neck, brushing the edge of her ear, greedy and painfully needy – “No we can’t, not now – you’re in enough trouble already –”

It is the wrong thing to say, she realises. Nothing ever makes Anatole more intent on a course of action than being told _no._ But then of course she knows that, so it must have been the thing she wanted to say all along. She is frightened tonight; suddenly the lacquer of the world has started to crack and peel off and all of the things they fight so hard not to say and not to do are threatening to slip through that hole in the sky.

“Don’t _no_ me,” he murmurs into her throat, lips vibrating against her skin, his hand sliding inside her dress, finding her bare skin, pulling the silk away from her shoulders, kissing her shoulders, burying his face in them as though he would like to drown there – “Give me this, I need you, sister please, before I go.”

She wants to laugh it all off like she usually does, to point out that this is not the end of the world, that it is not as though this is the last time they will see each other, but somehow, today it feels like a lie and she cannot say it. She does not want him to stop anyway. For once, just for once, she unlocks her heart, ready to take the inevitable rush of pain.

“I love you,” he whispers, lips almost against her and she can feel him shuddering from the truth of it and there it is, the pain flooding in and she wants to say what she always says when the words slip out like bullets – _no no, don’t, we don’t say that, we don’t_ , _not that –_ because it hurts too much and it twists in the heart and will not leave. She does not say those things, she closes her eyes, wants to say them, hears herself say instead–

“Yes, I love you, you know I love you.” He kisses her then like a kiss in a dream, like the kiss at the end of the fairy tale, heady and full of spiralling scents, too hard, too hot, too desperate.

“I’ve always loved you –” it is like a song they have not sung in years but both remember the words and every note, like a song from childhood, a memory and a rarely to be repeated pleasure – “there was never anyone else, you are –”

“Everything –” she breathes it out in a long shuddering breath and her hands have parted his dishevelled clothes and he slides inside her, and she is water, parting and heaving and they are determined to speak now after so long –

“You fit me so perfectly.”

“You were made to take me. I was made to be inside you.”

“We were made to be like this,” and her arms, her legs, all her limbs around him and her head in the crook of his neck, his head in the hollow of her neck and shoulder and they could not be any closer – “I don’t want to be any further away, if the whole world came in now they couldn’t tear us apart.”

“They won’t, they won’t, not ever.”

It is the only thing that is half a lie; they remember of course, they remember making these promises years ago. But the world did come in and has been tearing away ever since. It does not matter now, their oft repeated lie is suddenly true – _it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, none of it matters._ She comes crying, face wet, his face wet on her shoulder, with her and shaking until breaking point with the intensity of it.

They do not fall apart, do not even roll over onto their backs to breathe; they take the shuddering shivery breathlessness and cling to each other, tiny in the middle of the large bed.

“Don’t say goodbye,” she says, not looking at him.

“I never do” he answers the same.

_Don’t say goodbye, don’t say I love you, break bad news with a smile on the lips and don’t care about it, don’t ever care about any of it._ They have lived by these rules so long now, it feels like the coldest kind of nakedness to have broken so many of them now.

“It’s not like we’ll never see each other again,” she says and it is the last thing she says before he leaves.

She lies in bed for a long time later on her own, the sky darkening outside. She thinks about the bet and how she had said it was a winning scenario either way. It feels just now as though really, both of them have lost. Later she goes to the window and searches the sky for the comet again, but cannot find it. She closes her eyes on the dark of the sky and remembers another world, a childish game that is better than reality. For once there was a strange land full of strange beasts and beautiful flowers, no two of which were ever alike except them. Her world is a jewel, a place to live in behind her eyes, a place where that unformed ridiculous _wrong_ cannot exist and they will never be separated. She glares up at the sky in defiance, her world glittering out of her eyes.

and the sky looks down and does not care.

__x__

**Yeah, I skiddadled quite quickly to the end of this, I was confusing myself by writing this one and the next one at the same time so I figured best to wrap this one up and start posting the new one soon, that one’s much longer and will cover events in better detail, hopefully also tying up any loose ends I had in this. :-)**


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